The Barbed-Wire Kiss (29 page)

“You’re the second person to ask me that. Yes, she’s worth it.”

Bobby nodded. “That’s good. She feel the same way about you?”

“I think so.”

The party boat had slowed, was looming larger in front of them now, light staining the water around it. Bobby throttled back.

“You have no idea,” he said, “about how I feel about what happened. I wouldn’t know how to tell you, where to start.”

“Ancient history. Forget it.”

“You helped me get out of something I had just about given up hope of ever getting out of. I thought it was over, man. I thought I was done.”

He exhaled smoke and the wind carried it away.

“If it wasn’t for you,” Bobby said, “we wouldn’t have had this chance, Janine and I.”

“You would have done the same for me.”

“Would I?”

Harry looked at him.

“Maybe I would have. I hope I would have. But I’ve been finding out as I get older, man, you never know what you’re capable of, do you? What you think, what you want, what you pretend … it’s all bullshit. You never know what you’re going to do until the time comes. And then it’s too late.”

By midnight, they’d caught six blues. Harry was relegated to watching as Bobby reeled them in, worked the hooks out of their jaws, careful to keep his fingers clear of the sharp ridges of teeth. After he’d put the last fish in the cooler, they heard the party boat start its engines again. It swung south and gained speed, moving away from them, running lights glowing fainter in the darkness.

“They’ll give it a few more hours,” Bobby said. “See if they can get on top of another school. But we’ve got more than enough here. We’ll cook a couple tomorrow and you can put the rest in your freezer.”

Bobby started the engine, asked Harry to take the wheel, and then brought in all four lines, stowed the poles. When he was done, he got two more beers from the cabin, put one on the engine housing beside Harry.

“It’s the little things you miss,” he said. He took a swig of beer. “The things you take for granted, until they’re gone. Like this.”

Harry pointed them toward the lights of the shore, spray breaking over the bow. He saw the first of the channel buoys, steered toward it, taking them home.

At the marina, Bobby locked up the boat and they carried the cooler to the El Camino, stowed it in the bed. Harry could feel the fatigue catching up with him as they drove home on Route 33, heading west. He leaned against the door, felt himself drifting off. Bobby drove in silence, the radio on low, and Harry rolled down the window, hoping the night air would keep him awake.

He was still drifting in the valley between sleep and waking when Bobby turned into the driveway and up the gravel slope. He steered into the side yard, the headlights flashing across the Saturn and the barn beyond.

“You look like you’re about done,” Bobby said. “Go on inside. I’ll get the cooler.”

He shut off the engine, killed the headlights. Harry realized then that the yard was pitch black. The security light above the barn was out.

The gun came through the open window, touched the side of his head.

“Get out of the car,” Vincent Perna said.

Harry didn’t move. he turned to Bobby, saw a figure beyond him, another gun. Bobby’s hands were flat and motionless on top of the wheel.

“Come on,” Perna said. He reached in with his other hand, tugged up on the stem of the lock, pulled the door open. The interior light flashed on.

“Let’s go, assholes,” the figure outside Bobby’s window said.

Perna backed away from the car, gun still up, as Harry pushed the door wide, swung his legs out. He stepped out of the car, right hand up. He heard Bobby’s door open behind him.

“In the house,” Perna said, gesturing with the gun. Harry saw it was a Ruger automatic, a nine-millimeter. He started around the front of the El Camino, saw that Bobby was out of the car as well, Tommy Rego behind him. He wore the same yellow warm-up suit Harry had seen him in at the boxing match.

Perna’s gun touched the small of his back.

“Walk,” he said.

The four of them started toward the house. As they neared the porch, the living room lights went on.

“You first,” Perna said, and Harry went up the steps. The front door was ajar. Perna shouldered him through it and into the living room.

Dunleavy stood in front of the fireplace, arms folded. He wore a gray sport jacket and black slacks, and Harry could see the edge of the holster on his right hip. In the center of the floor was a ladderback chair that belonged in the kitchen.

“I thought we were going to end up waiting here all night,” Dunleavy said.

Perna touched him with the gun again.

“Go sit on the couch,” he said.

He did as he was told, saw Bobby come in behind him, hands up, face drained of blood. Rego held a long-barreled Colt revolver with a ventilated rib pointed at his spine.

“You’re Fox, aren’t you?” Dunleavy said. “Lucky coincidence. I don’t think we’ve met. Your timing ain’t worth shit, though.”

“What do you want?” Bobby said.

“Shut the fuck up,” Rego said.

“What do I want?” Dunleavy said. “Nothing from you, ace. You just happen to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

Perna closed the front door, leaned against it. Tucked into his waistband was the butt-end of a pistol with mother-of-pearl grips. Ray’s .38.

Dunleavy pointed at the kitchen chair.

“Over there,” he said, and Rego gave Bobby an open-handed push that propelled him forward. He caught his balance, turned quickly. Rego pointed the Colt at his face, barely three feet separating them.

“Try it,” Rego said. “Go ahead.”

Bobby lowered his hands, backed up until his thighs touched the chair. He sat down slowly.

Harry looked around. Rego was about six feet from him, Perna farther away. There was no way he could move from the couch without both of them having time to fire.

“I want to make one thing clear,” Dunleavy said. “I don’t give a shit about your banging Fallon’s wife. In fact, nobody does, except Fallon. But business, that’s something different.”

“I paid you,” Bobby said.

Dunleavy looked at him, smiled, and shook his head.

“You didn’t pay me, ace. It wasn’t my dope you were selling.”

“Harry’s got nothing to do with this.”

“Oh, no?” Dunleavy said. “Pretty hard to buy that at this point.”

Harry looked at Bobby, met his glance, kept his own expression blank, willing him to calm down.

“I wasn’t sure how to play this until now,” Dunleavy said. “To make this happen with the minimal fuss. But I feel like there’s an opportunity here I should take advantage of. Tommy, do me a favor? Look around, see if you can find some tape or something. Electrician’s tape is fine, anything that’s strong.”

Rego nodded, went into the kitchen.

“You know, Harry,” Dunleavy said, “I was hoping we weren’t going to run into each other again. But you just couldn’t leave it alone, could you?”

“What is it you want?”

Rego came back out with a roll of duct tape. Dunleavy gestured at Bobby.

Rego put the Colt on the mantelpiece. Dunleavy dug into his pants pocket, came up with a small penknife. Rego held up his hand, caught it. He went behind the chair, started peeling away a strip of tape.

“Don’t do anything stupid,” Harry said. “Nobody has to get hurt here. Just tell me what you want.” Knowing what the answer was.

Dunleavy swept back the edge of his jacket, took a snubnosed .38 with walnut grips from the holster. He opened the cylinder, shook the shells into his left palm. He dropped them into his jacket pocket, held up a single shell between thumb and forefinger. He slid it into a chamber, spun the cylinder and closed it.

“I just want to make sure we’re properly motivated here,” he said.

“If it’s more money you want—” Bobby said.

“Shut up,” Rego said. “Hold still.”

He began to tape Bobby’s right wrist to the chair arm, passing the roll under and over. After four loops, the silver swathes reached almost to his elbow. Rego opened the penknife, sawed through the tape, patted down the end, and started on the other arm.

“Legs too, I think,” Dunleavy said.

Rego cut off longer strips, the noise of the unreeling tape loud in the room. He bound Bobby’s feet to the chair legs, then stepped away.

“One more piece,” Dunleavy said. He held up his left hand, finger and thumb about four inches apart. Rego cut another strip.

“Just stick it on the back of the chair for now.”

Rego put the roll of tape on the mantelpiece, picked up the Colt again.

“It’s getting late,” Perna said. “Let’s cut the bullshit and wrap this up.”

“Exactly what I’m doing,” Dunleavy said. He put the .38 back in its holster, went over to stand behind Bobby’s chair.

“I can get more money,” Bobby said. “It’ll take a couple of days but I can get it.”

Dunleavy ignored him.

“We ran into your buddy Wiley a little earlier tonight,” he said to Harry.

“That so?” Harry said.

“Yeah. He didn’t show up for work today. We had to go looking for him. Wasn’t home, either, and his suitcase and some of his clothes were gone. Didn’t look good.”

“What’s that got to do with me?”

“You want to play this out, huh? Okay, we’ll play.”

He pulled the strip of tape from the back of the chair.

“Turns out he’d tried to blow town. What he should have done was haul ass and not look back. Sounds easy enough, doesn’t it? But some people are just born fuckups, I guess. Nothing you can do for them. It’s their destiny.”

He reached around with his left hand, cupped Bobby’s jaw. Bobby twisted his head away, but Dunleavy pulled it back, held it there. Harry felt himself inching forward on the couch, tasted the beer and bile rising inside him.

“Stay there,” Perna said. The muzzle of the Ruger lifted slightly.

“Relax,” Dunleavy said and slapped the tape over Bobby’s lips, pressed it into place, let go of his jaw. Bobby began to thrash, cracked the back of his head on the chair. The legs squealed on the hardwood floor. Dunleavy held the chair in place with both hands to keep it from going over.

Bobby’s face was reddening, panic and anger bright in his eyes. Dunleavy put a hand on his shoulder as if to calm him.

“Problem was,” he said, “Wiley had a package that didn’t belong to him, something he hadn’t paid for yet. So we look all over. No sign of it. But I have a hunch he’ll be back, so we stick around. Come six o’clock, who comes walking through the door? Turns out he had an airline ticket to Los Angeles, but his flight wasn’t until nine that night. First one he could get. So instead of sitting tight in the airport waiting for the plane, like he should have, he decides to make a last trip home for something he forgot. You know what it was? A high school football trophy. Can you believe that? That’s what I mean about some people being born fuckups. But not you, Harry, right?”

“Why are you telling me this?”

“The point of this story, if you haven’t already guessed, is that Wiley told us you slapped him around, took the package from him, and told him to get out of town.”

“He told you he gave me something?”

“‘Took’ was the way he put it. Might be he was lying. If so, I have to give him credit, because he stuck to his story. And we didn’t make it easy on him. The other possibility, of course, is that all three of you were in this together. Personally, I doubt it. I can’t see you hooking up with a numbnuts like Wiley. But the thing is, either way, it leads back to you. Now, we could spend the next hour and a half tearing your house apart, or you could just tell us where it is and save everybody—including yourself—a lot of aggravation.”

“What is it I’m supposed to have?”

“Wrong answer.”

He looked at Rego. “Tommy, one more thing. Go upstairs, get me a pillowcase from the bed?”

“What for?”

“You’ll see.”

Harry heard his footsteps on the stairs. After a few minutes, he came clumping back down with a white pillowcase.

“Thanks.” Dunleavy took the pillowcase and looked back at Harry.

“You have a pretty good idea what’s going to happen here, don’t you?” he said.

Harry didn’t answer.

“Okay, then,” Dunleavy said. “Your way.”

He shook the pillowcase open. Bobby was craning his neck, trying to see what was happening behind him, when Dunleavy worked the pillowcase over his head. Bobby began to thrash again, the front chair legs lifting off the floor, then coming down hard. Dunleavy held the chair still, took the .38 back out. He held it near Bobby’s right ear, muzzle pointing at the floor, thumbed the hammer back until it locked.

“Can you hear that?” he said to Bobby. “You know what that is?”

He touched the muzzle to the pillowcase and Bobby twisted his head away. Dunleavy put his left hand on his shoulder, squeezed it reassuringly.

“I know what you’re thinking, Harry,” he said. “You’re thinking, ‘I’m dead anyway, why give him the satisfaction?’ Right? And that’s pretty good logic, I guess, but it’s selfish too. You’re not thinking about your buddy here.”

He brushed the muzzle of the .38 along the side of Bobby’s head, stopped where the temple would be.

“And believe me,” he said, “you can spare him an awful lot of anxiety.”

He squeezed the trigger and the hammer fell. The click of the empty chamber was loud in the room.

No one moved or spoke. Dunleavy took the gun away.

“Have to admit, I cheated there,” he said. “I knew it was an empty chamber. Next time I promise not to look.”

Acid sourness rushed into Harry’s throat. He swallowed.

“Go fuck yourself,” he said.

Perna laughed. Dunleavy raised an eyebrow.

“Maybe we’re not communicating,” he said. “If that’s the case, it’s a shame. Because we’ve got all night. We could take our time doing you both, then go on and find it on our own anyway.”

“What makes you think it’s here, whatever it is?”

“Don’t disappoint me. We know it’s here. You haven’t had time to sell it or move it anywhere except somewhere close. Don’t wrack your brains trying to come up with an out here, Harry. You don’t have a lot of options.”